He says nothing. It wasn’t a question.
“Skarphédinn recorded all his triumphs on the cell phone. But did he tell you everything too? Did he keep you informed throughout?”
“Right from the start. He started stealing medications from Dad and selling them. And he’d drop in on Mom at the hospital and steal more drugs there. And Mom…”
“Your mother got caught in his net. Stuck between your father’s drug abuse and her son who was also making illegal use of drugs, but in a different way. And she covered for both of them.”
His eyes fill with tears. “Mom couldn’t…And then Skarpi started bringing the stuff in from all over…”
“He must have needed more, a larger range of wares. And Mördur went down to Reykjavík to pick the stuff up?”
Rúnar nods.
“Your parents lost everything ten or fifteen years ago. Was that because of your father’s drug abuse?”
“Yes.”
“Was Skarphédinn planning to help them out financially, with the blood money he got from his drug dealing? So that drugs, which had destroyed the family, could rebuild it again?”
“Mom wouldn’t take anything from him. They had a furious fight. She called him a merchant of death.”
“Did Skarpi tell you everything, as a rule?”
“Yes. Too much, sometimes.”
“Were you always close, the two of you?”
“As close as any two people can be. He was always good to me, did all he could for me. And that didn’t change.”
“So he was your role model? Your big brother? Your protector?”
Now tears are flooding down his cheeks. “Yes. That’s what he was. That’s it.”
I can just imagine how their mother must have felt about the situation.
“Until…?” I ask.
“Until…Sólrún was…”
He starts crying.
I stand up, go over to Rúnar, and put my arm around him.
“They met when the movie was being made,” I say. “Sólrún fell in love with Skarphédinn. Head over heels. And he had sex with her. But he was also having sex with his leading lady. He introduced both girls to drugs. One survived longer than the other. But now they’re both dead.”
He’s racked with sobbing.
“Sólrún never got over him,” I say. “She never got over the way he dumped her, and she clung on to her hopes of winning him back. But she was hooked on drugs by then. She came up north and enrolled in high school here, just to be near Skarphédinn. Then what happened?”
I return to my seat, facing him, and leave him to weep for a while. I know all about this story, really. I’m familiar with the main points. The disparate threads have been coming together in my mind, bit by bit, slowly but surely. All that’s missing is the denouement.
“Sólrún was supposed to be my girlfriend,” Rúnar suddenly says. “Skarpi introduced us. He wanted us to be a couple.”
“To get her off his back?”
He gazes at me through his tears. “Maybe.” After a moment’s silence, he adds: “Maybe he was doing it as a favor to me too. I try to believe that.”
“So do you think she was only with you so she could be near him?”
In a voice full of pain, he replies: “Maybe.”
“But maybe she really did like you? That’s quite possible. You should think of that too, Rúnar.”
He sniffs but says nothing.
“I think,” I observe, “that the catalyst was the death of Ásdís Björk Gudmundsdóttir. The woman who fell into the Jökulsá River. Am I right?”
He’s staring down at his hands again. Then he says:
“Skarpi had never done anything like that before. He sold drugs to people for their own use. He claimed he was just a facilitator—helping people who were bent on self-destruction. That they submitted to him of their own free will.”
“Now that’s debatable,” I comment. “It’s a rationalization. But not entirely illogical. Your brother appears to have been a chameleon, changing his ideas according to his own convenience. He seems to have had fun confusing people, giving a false impression, substituting one mask for another. That was the significance of the Terror Helmet—power over others. But OK, go on.”
“He and Ásgeir at Yumm had been in contact before…done business, I suppose you’d say. To do with his wife. And…No, I can’t…It’s too horrible…”
He’s on the brink of tears again.
“You don’t need to say any more, Rúnar. It’s all in the calendar on the cell phone,” I assure him. “Ásgeir got in touch with Skarphédinn. He was tired of his wife and her resistance to selling the company. And the business was in trouble. Ásgeir and Skarphédinn came up with a plan to get rid of her while avoiding any suspicion of foul play. And it was easy, with Ásdís Björk’s medical history. Skarphédinn provided the drug cocktail. Ásgeir slipped it to her in a drink. He probably didn’t even have to give her a push overboard. And in return, Skarphédinn got a load of cash. Some to him personally, the rest as sponsorship for the play, Loftur the Sorcerer. Ten million krónur, according to the company accounts. It wouldn’t take Ásgeir long to claw that back, once he could sell the business and cash in.”
“The production was Skarpi’s dream come true. He longed to play the part of Loftur. It was all he talked about for weeks.”
“Why?” I ask, although I think I know the answer.
“I’m not entirely sure. But he said to me once: What Loftur did by old-style sorcery, I’m doing with modern-day sorcery. If Loftur were alive now, he’d be doing the same as me. Loftur and I are human beings who become our own gods.”
“And it destroyed both of them?”
He looks away.
“Now they want me to play the role,” he says.
“To play Loftur?”
“Do you think I should?”
“Well, there would be a certain irony to it,” I reply. Then I add: “And maybe there’s a kind of poetic justice there, somewhere.”
Rúnar is silent.
“Then what?” I ask.
“It was murder!” he exclaims, slamming his fist down on the table. “My brother took part in a cold-blooded murder!”
Yes, murder, I think. Murder, in the coldest of blood that flows through human veins. “I suppose anything was for sale, if the price was right?”
“He wouldn’t listen to me,” Rúnar continues, incandescent with righteous rage. “I told him he had to stop it from happening. He just said: I’m above all laws. I decide for myself what I do. Other people decide what they do. I got…I got so angry, I went for him. But he just laughed and patted me on the head, like a little puppy.”
“Judging by the calendar on the cell phone, he seems to have got a kick out of the risk? The danger?”
Rúnar looks at me in surprise. “Yes, that’s it. That’s exactly it. He loved taking risks. Loved to see how far he could go. No matter who he hurt along the way.”
“And I saw from the cell phone that you told your mom what he had done.”
He says nothing.
“And she was convulsed with rage and despair.”
“She told Skarpi he’d crossed the line. That he’d completely lost touch with reality. She said she hadn’t raised her children so they could become killers. He just laughed at her too.”
“That evening, the night before Holy Thursday, you were at the party with Skarphédinn.”
“I went with Sólrún. Skarpi was acting like a raving lunatic. Wearing that stupid witch’s robe and…”
“Those idiots from Reydargerdi were making a nuisance of themselves, and he responded with some racist insults.”
He shakes his head.
“They were just fooling around. They had to pretend not to know each other, so they put on a show. Skarpi enjoyed that kind of thing.”
Rúnar falls silent, deep in thought.
“If I were to say that Skarphédinn fell off his pedestal that night, would that be a long way from th
e truth?”
He looks at me. His surprise is giving way to trepidation.
“What do you mean?”
“Your brother performed some kind of aphrodisiac spell. He pulled out a pubic hair…”
He’s taken aback.
“…and an eyelash. He set fire to them, then slipped the ash into a girl’s drink at the party. And a little while after, he was in bed with some girl. I can’t be sure who it was, but…”
“He didn’t need any aphrodisiac spell. Sólrún would do whatever he wanted.”
“Was she high?”
“She was using every day by then. And she was high at the party. But maybe she didn’t need to be high. Maybe that was exactly what she wanted. What she wanted more than anything else.” He buries his face in his hands. “She was pregnant by him.”
I can hardly go on myself. I can’t remember ever feeling so bad. Or seeing another person in such pain. After a long silence, I ask him: “Why did you and Skarphédinn go out to the dump?”
He pauses, then answers: “I asked why he did it. Why he did that to me. Why he did it to Sólrún. Do you know what he said?”
“I did it because I could?” I say.
Despite all his grief and pain, Rúnar is dumbfounded with surprise.
“How did you know that? What is it with you, anyway?”
“Um,” I say. “It’s my job to keep my finger on the pulse of life here in Iceland. And actually, your brother’s calendar entries give a pretty good idea of his mind-set.”
For a long time, Rúnar gazes at me. Then he seems to reach a decision.
“I broke down completely at the party. He put his arm around me and said: Come on, brother of mine, let’s get the hell out of here, leave these losers behind. I saw that Sólrún was lying in the bed, dead to the world, off her face. I said: Shouldn’t we take Sólrún home at least? Skarpi said: Relax, man. You’re master of your destiny. Other people must look out for themselves. You’ve got to face up to what Loftur said: I am silver alloy—fragments of evil, fragments of good.”
I recall what Skarphédinn said in our interview, reveling in the hidden joy of his sins.
In sin, one becomes one’s true self.
At about the time he spoke those words to me, a woman was falling into the cold waters of the Jökulsá River. Pushed by him. Although he wasn’t there.
“Then he drove like a madman out to the dump,” Rúnar continues intently. “I thought he was going to kill us both. He stopped the car at the gate to the dump, and I asked: What are we doing here? He didn’t answer me. He gestured for me to follow him, and we climbed over the fence. He said: I’m going to show you my kingdom. We walked on into the junkyard, and he showed me an old, crushed, rusty wreck of a motor. That was where he kept his stuff. Drugs in all the colors of the rainbow. This is where my power is hidden, he said. Like he was playing Loftur the Sorcerer.”
He falls silent.
“I thought he’d gone mad. Talking like a character in some old book. Then he said: Rúnar, you’re the only one I can trust with my power and my dominion. You’re the only one who knows. The only one who has the power.”
Rúnar shakes his head.
“He jumped up on top of the wreck, spread his arms wide, and howled: I am the Lord! I am the Master!”
Once again he falls silent.
“Next to the motor was a container and a stepladder. He climbed up onto the container and kept on roaring that wild nonsense over the piles of garbage, scrap metal, and waste. I was in a state of confusion—angry, hurting, desperate. Maybe I was as crazy as he was. But all I knew was this: it couldn’t go on.”
I wait for the inevitable.
“I climbed up the stepladder and pushed him off.”
We stand in silence for a moment.
“But why did you come back on the evening of Good Friday and set fire to the tires? Were you meaning to burn him at the stake, like the witch he claimed to be?”
“That didn’t occur to me. I just thought he was less likely to be found in among all the burning rubbish.”
“Leaving nothing but bones and ash?”
“I didn’t realize tires would burn for so long. Didn’t know that.”
“And what happened to all the drugs?”
“They went first of all.”
He gazes at me intently. His expression says: That’s the story. And now it’s over.
I wait a moment, then light up and say: “That was the story. And it’s over. Except that there’s one thing wrong with it, Rúnar.”
Surprise and trepidation appear on his tense face.
“Your brother made entries on the calendar as interesting things arose.”
“What are you getting at?”
“The final entry was made about half an hour before he died, according to the police’s estimate.”
The anxiety in his face is turning to naked fear. I retrieve my transcript. “This is the entry, decrypted:
Mom mad about my deal w/ Ásgeir about his wife. Rúnar told her. Fucked Sólrún to remind Rúnar who’s boss.”
I stop reading. “That’s not all he wrote. In fact, your account of events is broadly true, but it wasn’t just the two of you at the end of the story—not in the car, and not at the dump. You told your mother what was happening. She insisted on joining you, and your brother relented. She was there.”
I take a breath and go on.
“And it wasn’t you who pushed your brother off the container.”
Rúnar has the look of a condemned man, waiting in the stocks for his turn on the gallows.
“It says here: R went whining to Mom. I told her to mind her own business. She said I was a monster! That I’d burn in Hell! And she’d make sure of that, right now!
“You both knew that Skarphédinn had to be stopped somehow. But she’s the one who pushed him. You couldn’t. And she acted. And after that you and your mom worked together to cover it up.”
“There’s more in the calendar,” I add. “But I won’t read it to you.”
Fortunately, I don’t find myself having to read out to Rúnar the final sentence of his brother’s final entry:
I’m going to tell them the whole truth. Idiots.
I have given you so much that I cannot let go of you. You must be kind to me, Loftur. My family are magnanimous—and melancholic. I do not know if I could bear it if you were to betray me… I think I would kill myself.
The young actress in the role of Steinunn, the abandoned, pregnant maidservant, is giving a heartfelt, emotional performance. Eternal love triangles form and re-form on the stage as much as off. I know the play so well by now that I find myself mouthing the words with the actors. And when Loftur declares, a little while later, a dead look in his eyes:
I wish you were dead!
I inevitably find myself thinking of the young man who longed, above all else, to stand on this stage and speak those words.
My desires are powerful and boundless. And in the beginning was desire. Desires are the souls of men.
Skarphédinn had quoted those lines of the old play.
I glance back over my shoulder and see Chief of Police Ólafur Gísli with his comely wife in the row behind me. He’s obviously absorbed in the play and doesn’t notice me.
He’s made good use of the SIM card I formally handed over to him, accompanied by the key to the code. Mördur Njálsson is behind bars. The Three Stooges too. They will all be submitted to the justice of their fellow men.
The most painful thing of all is to find out that the one who possesses you, heart and soul, is evil…
When Steinunn speaks these words to her lover, I find myself glancing at the lady on my left—one of two I have invited to the play this evening. Gunnhildur is all dressed up and wearing lipstick in honor of the occasion. She seems to be totally caught up in the play—not unlike the Guiding Light mafia in front of the TV, back at the care home. I smile to myself as I recall the moment when I told her that her son-in-law, Ásgeir Eyvindarson,
had been arrested on suspicion of causing the death of his wife. Not because it was a particularly happy moment, but because, before my eyes, the old lady was suddenly transformed. No longer old and senile, confused, unreliable, she was Gunnhildur Bjargmundsdóttir, a functioning member of society, whose word was worth something. Not written off. Not dismissed. And, above all, she was a mother who had won justice for her murdered child.
“How did you solve the mystery, my boy?” she inquired.
“It was a matter of a cell,” I replied.
Gunnhildur brightened. “Aha,” she said with satisfaction, raising a wizened finger. “Didn’t I say so?”
“Yes, that’s what you said.”
“That’s the way it is today. All in the…the…”
“Cells?”
“That’s it. Absolutely.”
I nodded. “The answers are always in the cells.”
Gunnhildur leaned toward me, placed a weatherbeaten hand over mine, and whispered to me: “Considering how silly you can be, my boy, I’m sure that good old Inspectors Morse and Taggart would be proud of you now.”
That was nice to hear.
And the old lady looked at me from her bright blue eyes, nestling in the wrinkles of her beaming face. “Do you know, I think I’m even a little bit proud of you myself.”
That was even nicer.
“My dear Gunnhildur,” I said, placing my other hand over hers, “don’t forget that Morse and Taggart would have been nowhere without their trusty confederates.”
On the Day of Judgment you will come face to face with a visage that is exactly the same as yours, but contorted by sin and passion, Steinunn says to Loftur.
A look at my other companion, on my right. My daughter Gunnsa’s face shines with innocence. On the Day of Judgment, will her face be like mine, bearing the scars of life’s sins and passions? In the first row, in front of us, sits Kristín, mother of Skarphédinn and Rúnar.
The back of her head has a tense, flinty look about it.
He who with all his soul wishes death upon another shall bow his head and look at the ground, and say: “Thou who livest in the eternal darkness. Make my will thy will! Kill this person! And I swear, in the name of the mighty trinity—in the name of the sun, which is the shadow of the Lord; in the name of the fire in the earth, which is thy shadow; and in the name of my own body, which is my shadow, that my soul is thine, for ever and ever.”
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